Tiny Homes for the Homeless

During the 2014-2015 academic year, 85 of our high school students from REALM Charter School identified affordable housing as a social challenge they wanted to tackle using community-based architecture. Over the course of the year, students researched, designed, engineered, prototyped, and constructed two “tiny homes” on trailers, one to be auctioned off, and the other to be donated to a homeless individual living at Opportunity Village in Eugene, Oregon. The houses were identical twins, mirror images of each other, providing 100 square feet of comfortable living, sleeping, and storage space. Students were able to consider the social, environmental, physical, and cultural factors of affordable housing through the creation of these two units. Currently, the donated home is being occupied at Opportunity Village, while the other is home to a single mother and her daughter in Pasadena, California.